City Councilman Danny Dromm (D-Jackson Heights) held a hearing on Tuesday to investigate the treatment of immigrants at detention centers throughout the city, many of which are privately operated.
One, at 182-22 150 Ave. in Jamaica, run by Geo Group, a private company, has been the subject of public debate since as early as 2004, when hunger strikes occurred at the center. Five years later, two guards there were convicted of covering up the beating of an inmate, according to Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.
Over a dozen people testified at the hearing, among them immigrants detained at the facilities, immigration lawyers and immigration advocacy groups.
They alleged that a slew of abuses have occurred at the facilities, including sexual abuse by guards, detainees being denied the right to access their attorneys, lack of medical care and being detained for periods longer than six months without being charged.
“It’s absolutely unbelievable,” said Forest Hills immigration attorney Naresh Gehi of the amount of time his client, Taimur Hussain, has been detained.
Hussain, who lived with his family in Astoria before being jailed nine months ago, moved to the country illegally in 1995. He is being held in a facility called the Delancey Detention Center in New Jersey, Gehi said, and has no criminal record.
“He has two American children, they’re completely displaced,” Gehi added.
Many undocumented immigrants at these facilities have no criminal record, according to Dromm. Some are asylum seekers while others may have been caught during Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on workplaces, for example.
“You have people who have not committed a crime,” Dromm said, “but they’re being thrown into prison-like conditions.”
Dromm and de Blasio would like tours of the facilities in New York. They would also like the Department of Homeland Security, which Dromm said oversees the centers, to make what goes on inside them more transparent. Both have called on a Department of Justice investigation into the matter. “Geo has refused to make any statements at all,” Dromm said. “We want to know what they’re doing at that Jamaica facility.”
Taxpayer posted at 2:21 pm on Fri, Feb 3, 2012.
The Obama Administration has recently authorized GEO Group to manage Federal detention centers across the U.S., not to mention GITMO. While creating laws which are unconstitutional, they are incarcerating and detaining our own citizens for profit.
Some things should not be privatized and traded for profit.
Analyst posted at 1:12 am on Thu, Feb 2, 2012.
There is good reason to question any facility run by GEO Group.
For instance, in Florida it has had a long, extremely close, unhealthy relationship with the legislature and the governor’s office. Marco Rubio helped them build an unneeded state prison at taxpayer expense at Blackwater River. GEO insider Donna Arduin has been close to successive administrations save for when she spent a year doing the same corporate hatchet job for Arnold Schwartzenegger as his Director of Finance.
GEO has a history of vastly overcharging governments for its services. It did so in Florida for millions, finally settling for less thanks to a friendly administration (Its main competitor, CCA, also overbilled, but settled for a lot more, thanks to its weaker connections).
The same thing happened in New Mexico where an ex-GEO Group warden was made the Secretary of Corrections after massive contributions to the Governor. They deliberately ran its prisons there at far below contracted staffing levels. With CCA, they would have been liable for $18 million in fines, but the former privateer declined to bill them a penny. http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/09/07/117742/nm-secretary-penalize-prison/
Just across the border, GEO Group offered about a million dollars to the then Colorado Director of Prisons, Nolin Renfrow, to get them a for-profit prison built at Ault. He worked at it for months, while employed by the state, but local community resistance frustrated the conspiracy so it wasn’t built nor did he collect anything that is known to authorities. http://www.denverpost.com/ci_5363402
So there should be virtually no doubt that someone is getting paid off, and compensated very well. The leadership in Tallahassee removed one of the obstacles to this scam from his committee chairmanship just today.
These legislators shouldn’t be making policy about prisons. They should be living in them for years to come and should share cells with the executives from the corporations that have apparently bought them off.
The other for-profit prison competition, besides CCA, is just as bad. CEC is actually the corporation running Delaney Hall (not Delancey) in New Jersey. It is equally troubled and its extremely close, long term relationship with Governor Christie has come under question.